Like fairy floss, Fed Square Apple is a trick of the spin

By Monica Dux

8 March 2018 — 2:26pm

Whoever invented fairy floss was a true genius. Spinning lifeless sugar grains into delicate coloured clouds. A magician's trick, its loveliness belying the fact that it is utterly devoid of nutrition or substance.

Which brings me to Federation Square, Melbourne's quirky yet incredibly successful centrepiece, which now looks set to have a large Apple store wedged into it, a development that is being waved tantalisingly under the public nose like fairy floss on a stick.

Illustration: Robin Cowcher

If you listen to the cheerleaders spruiking the project, you might imagine this store is an act of philanthropy, gifted to the city by our generous benefactors in California. We're told that Federation Square is a "destination of choice" for Apple! It'll be a "global flagship store" as well as a "technology hub". But wait, there's more! This Apple shop (sorry, "space") will host "workshops, classes, and live music events!" All of which is simply double-speak describing a very big shop that will sell Apple products.

To counter the naysayers, the state government is also insisting the shop is necessary for the financial viability of the square, as if tearing down one of the original buildings and plopping a huge commercial multinational into the middle of it is the only way of achieving this.

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Fed Square is a unique civic space, a place where people really do come together. It's not just another shopping mall where you go to waste money on the latest iPhone. As historian Graeme Davidson noted recently in The Conversation: "It would not occur to the average Briton to ask whether Trafalgar Square is paying for itself, much less to install an Apple store beside Nelson's Column. Isn't it time we grew up and recognised that not everything that is important to our collective life has a price?"

But it's not just the privatisation of a valuable public asset that makes this project so offensive. What's amplified the stench is the way Apple – and those in cahoots – is spinning us a yarn of magnificent and implausible proportions. The way the project is being so shamelessly puffed and touted. Like children, we're meant to be dazzled at how lovely it looks and how sweet it briefly tastes, while ignoring the fact it's really a worthless confection.

Apple is not a charity providing a community service. It's not there for us. It's a slick multinational juggernaut that's making buckets of money, which it takes out of our country while paying minimal tax. It frustrates consumers with its costly, overhyped devices, their built-in obsolescence fuelling the relentless need to buy the latest product, again and again, each time at massive cost, to our wallets and to the environment.

Apple is, quite simply, a corporate behemoth, with zero interest in civic accountability, responsibility or "community spirit". Yet we're meant to regard it as a privilege that its going to bulldoze part of our city's most important civic space.

Of course it's not just the Apple store. We live in a world where politicians and corporations are constantly spinning excrement into sugar and expecting us to thank them for feeding it to us. Think of the public housing developments in some inner Melbourne suburbs, areas where property prices are booming. Housing Minister Martin Foley insists this is "shaping a vibrant future for local residents and communities", when what the government is really doing is selling off public land to private developers, throwing in a paltry amount of vaguely defined social and public housing, and calling it "renewal". The bulk of the benefit will flow to the developers and the residents will get screwed. But hey, think of the "vibrant future!"

The same tricksy word games are played when coal is repackaged as "clean coal", or our government imprisons "illegal immigrants" (people legitimately seeking asylum) in offshore detention centres (concentration camps), which they only do in order to save people from drowning (get people to vote for them).

Spin is critical in these situations because if the truth were spoken plainly, it would be impossible to defend. It enables those in power to sell us utter garbage and fool us into thinking they're doing us a favour.

Seen in this light, maybe the Federation Square Apple store is an apt public monument to the disingenuousness of our times. My only suggestion would be that the government consider commissioning a new sculpture to sit outside the store. I'd propose a giant pile of pink fairy floss, melting away to reveal the fresh turd within. A global flagship turd! That really would be a world first.